I am a big fan of public radio

This week, Mike Miner wrote about WBEZ and the new “Chicago Public Media” strategic plan. It’s a plan that charts our direction for the next few years. Torey, staff and the board have been working on the plan since March 2008. It got leaked to the Chicago Reader and subsequently picked apart. So I thought I would ask Daniel Ash, our VP of Strategic Communications, to set the record straight.

Our strategic plan is a work in progress. Most staff and board members have participated in at least one meeting since March 2008. I’m one of the lucky ones, having participated in at least five discussions. In each meeting the discussion was wrapped around this question: How do we continue to accomplish our public service mission? The good news is that lunch was usually provided.

I did not plan to release this plan this way, but since it’s been posted without permission on another site I figure why not ask you directly what you think. Warning: when you put creative people in a room and ask them to imagine the future, you get BIG—sometimes wild—ideas. Hint: we’re still working on the practical translation of what we’re actually going to do over the next three years.

Here’s the deal: if Chicago Public Radio is not relevant to our audience—our community—we’re not doing the right thing. This document provides a broad framework for us to ask even more questions about what we’ll do and how we’ll do it. If you’ve got a moment, please read it and tell us what you think. This is just the beginning.

And without any more stalling, here’s the Strategic Plan 2010-2013.

If you choose not to read the horror story that is their plan document, I’ll give you my quick take: if the consulting firm that produced it could be held liable for professional malpractice, the plan document and the process that created it would be strong evidence in support of a claim. If nothing else, you should look to this example as a reminder of what not to do in your organization’s strategic planning process.

The most obvious problem with the plan is its authorship. Despite the fact that it carries the logo of a legitimate consulting firm, the plan’s content is seen as coming only from the WBEZ’s president. According to Miner’s research (emphasis added):

The new plan claims that this mission was arrived at by “strategic consensus.” But my soundings of people within or close to the organization suggest that the plan is generally regarded as an expression of the will, vision, and rhetorical flourishes of its president, Torey Malatia. Though the plan is written in the third-person plural, there are occasional lapses into ‘I’ and ‘my.’

The role of a strategic planning consultant is to expertly guide the process, and protect the interests of the organization, not to simply echo the will of its leader. What value did the consulting firm add to this process?

There is strong evidence that the process that WBEZ used to get to this point is flawed. As noted in the blog post, WBEZ has been working for over 18 months on the plan so far, and participation in the process by even the director of strategic communication has been spotty: “Most staff and board members have participated in at least one meeting since March 2008. I’m one of the lucky ones, having participated in at least five discussions.” So exactly who has been part of the process?

With most staff and board members having participated in ‘at least’ one meeting, is there any continuity, or executive commitment to the process? Even the most challenged organization I’ve worked with is able to agree to an enterprise wide strategy map within the first two months of focused effort. The fifteen page document, produced at an average rate of less than one page per month, fails to identify and clarify the strategy in actionable terms. As stated in the blog post: “Hint: we’re still working on the practical translation of what we’re actually going to do over the next three years.”This is a candid admission of the failure of WBEZ’s planning process.

Leaking the self-described “work in progress” to the public was no less than an act of organizational insurrection. The innocent sounding invitation to “tell us what you think” is an open invitation to discredit both the content and the process that has been used. There is little evidence of an understanding of how stakeholders value WBEZ, and their judgement of this weak, amateurish effort will be swift and sure.

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Having pre-meetings is far different from having post-meetings. Post-meetings happen because not everything that needed to be said came out during the actual meeting, due to fear, mainly. Pre-meetings are held to make sure that what needs to happen in the actual meeting actually happens.

What do I mean by the actual meeting (herein referred to as the Meeting)?  The Meeting is where people with crazy schedules (usually in leadership positions) somehow find a way to meet all at the same time. The topic for the Meeting, in whole or in part, is your change initiative.

To make the best use of the team’s time during the Meeting, only do the things in the Meeting that need to be done together as a team.Focus the team on the task at hand, whether it is a discussion about solutions or whether a decision must be made. Everything else should be done beforehand in pre-meetings with individuals or small groups.

Some of the things you can take care of in pre-meetings are:

• Training
• Seeking opinions, to see how each person is leaning
• Answering questions, since some will not ask in front of the rest of the team
• Target key people to speak up during the meeting
• Persuade people who need persuading

Notice that I’m not talking about a pre-meeting e-mail. This is a real sit-down (or phone call if necessary) meeting where you are preparing individuals for the Meeting (and also helping you prepare for the Meeting). If the Meeting and its desired outcome are really important to the success of your change initiative, an e-mail is not going to cut it.

Having pre-meetings may seem like overkill, or even like playing politics. But, if you’ve ever been in a leadership team meeting that has careened out of control or that has become stuck on an irrelevant or minute point, most likely there was not enough preparation of the attendees beforehand.

Take the time to have pre-Meeting meetings so you can focus the Meeting on achieving the desired outcome for your initiative.

(Editor’s note: This post first appeared in the Change Starts Here blog at Enclaria.com)

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Chris Brogan

A couple of months ago, a friend clued me into Chris Brogan’s blog. Brogan is an author and social media guru (of whom I hadn’t heard before) that my friend had seen give a great speech. It was otherwise hard for my friend to tell me exactly why I should pay attention to Brogan, but he told me that I needed to. So I subscribed to his blog, and have occasionally been engaged, and sometimes even fascinated with his postings.

One such fascinating moment was today, when Brogan posted a (sorta) amateur video of his entire keynote speech at a recent new media conference in Atlanta. The video is over an hour long (caution: it contains some coarse language) and worthwhile if you want to get a fresh and expert perspective on using social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) effectively in marketing. But even if you don’t watch more than a few minutes of it, you’ll see a new, cool, elegant (in the sense of simplicity), and prospectively scary new idea called BackNoise.

According to it’s home page tagline BackNoise is a web site that enables “adhoc conversations anywhere, anytime” (sic). It appears quick and easy to join or start a chat-room style conversation (but the site seems to be broken as I am writing this). By default, participants are anonymous. 

Real-time web-enabled conversations aren’t exactly a new idea, but the application here was. According to another blogger’s reflection of the event, everyone in the auditorium (at Georgia Tech Research Institute) had access to an electrical outlet and free Wi-Fi. Although we don’t see the audience in the video, it’s clear that many in the room had laptops open and running during Brogan’s speech.

Fascinating was the fact that while the conference promoters had encouraged the use of BackNoise during the entire event (according to the blogger), Brogan upped the ante by having the image of the BackNoise conversation from the conference projected behind him while he was speaking. This had the effect of enabling anyone in the room to comment anonymously on what Brogan was saying, in real time for everyone to see.

Brogan is a good speaker, and he proved with not only engaging content (without a PowerPoint!), but through his effective interaction with the BackNoise image on the screen. In some ways, it was like there was another speaker on the stage competing for the audience’s attention. In other ways, it was much more efficient audience participation that the typical Q&A at the end of a presentation(which Brogan did also). But, as the blogger reported, BackNoise was a distraction for some in the audience (even when not projected on the screen), and an invitation to incivility. She wrote, “…most of the conversation deteriorated to personal attacks on the presenters.  Nothing was off limits.  There were comments about presenters’ ages and weights….” Hmmm.

As an experienced public speaker, I am attracted to the idea of real-time feedback (but would I have the skill to read and speak at the same time?), and imagine it as a powerful tool for leveling the playing field when corporate executive speak to their workforce. And although I don’t like it, I’ve gotten used to clients and audience members using their Blackberrys and laptops while I am presenting, especially since I’ve had no success in asking that they be shut off. But would audiences and speakers be able to arrive at a new standard for civility that would enable productive feedback while maintaining the level of decorum expected in face-to-face interaction? These days, I doubt it.

This BackNoise thing may go nowhere, or may be the next big thing. Are you ready to speak or be spoken to with BackNoise in the background?

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However, not all surveys will improve the situation.  The following are four warning signs that conducting a survey may do more harm than good.

1.  The leaders don’t really want to know what people think.

The people who hold the top spots in an organization are usually out of the feedback loop.  As they move up the ladder, they are increasingly unaware of the pulse of the organization.  When the intent to conduct an employee survey is proposed, leaders who understand this phenomenon will jump at the chance to collect information that they have gradually been phased out of.  These leaders will want more details about what will be asked, and might even propose other questions that they would like to ask.

On the flip side of the coin are leaders who think they already know, or worse, don’t really care what the employees think or how they feel.  If you propose an employee survey and receive a resounding, “Sure, go ahead” without any curiosity or concerns, beware.  They probably don’t really want to know what people think.

2.  The leaders won’t believe the results.

Sometimes leaders will dismiss the results of the survey, even if it seems they wanted to know.  I once conducted an employee satisfaction survey that I created in-house due to lack of funds for the project.  Once I presented the results, the leaders wanted benchmarks to compare against to see if the results were “normal.”  Of course, having created the survey in-house, there was no other data to compare them against.

Before conducting a survey, watch for signs that the leaders commonly deflect accountability by picking apart the validity of numbers in other settings.  One way to combat this scenario ahead of time is to discuss the output that will be generated from the survey.  Discuss hypothetical results with the leadership team to determine up front what else they will want to know, so you can build it into your analysis.

3.  The leaders won’t do anything about it.

Even leaders who want to know and believe the results still may not do anything about it.  If employees give their opinion and then nothing is done, the integrity of the leaders and you as the surveyor drops, and future surveys will not be taken as seriously.

When discussing hypothetical results, gauge the interest of leaders in taking action.  For example, if the survey says that people don’t know the direction the company is going, are the leaders willing to share strategic information?  If the answer is no, then don’t bother asking.

To combat the first three reasons not to conduct an employee survey, make sure leaders know the questions you are asking and what you are actually measuring with the questions.  Discuss ahead of time what the implications and actions might be based on hypothetical responses you think they might have trouble absorbing.

4.  You don’t want to say what you already know.

The fourth reason not to conduct an employee survey, instead of being directed at the leadership team, is directed at the surveyor.  Are you conducting the survey because you don’t know the answers, or are you conducting the survey because you don’t want to say what you already know?  Is fear getting in the way of you speaking up and sharing the problems you see in the organization?  Is the survey actually a cop-out?

If any of that rings true, here’s an idea for you:  Include your point of view in the proposal for the survey.  State your hypothesis – what you believe to be true – and say you would like to conduct a survey to test it.  Share the implications and the action plan for improving the situation if you are right.  Then offer the option to skip the survey if they agree – they just might.  If they don’t agree with your hypothesis, then you will still conduct the survey.  Not only will you get more involvement from people who disagree with you, it will also be more scientific and objective than if you were just using the to communicate for you.

Yes, surveys can be very useful tools to help direct a change initiative.  That is, of course, if the leaders want to know what employees think, will believe the results, and will do something with the opportunities that are revealed.

(Editor’s note: This post first appeared in the Change Starts Here blog at Enclaria.com)

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Many years ago, there was a bit of a surge in the management buzzword stream of an idea called Management by Walking Around (MBWA). Although the idea is traced to early days at Hewlett Packard, where managers were encouraged to spend their time visiting employees, customers, and suppliers, the idea was popularized in an 1985 book by Tom Peters and Nancy Austin entitled “A Passion for Excellence.” Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of the book or MBWA; my sense is that the idea has been out of the mainstream for a while. Perhaps the walking around concept became obsolete around the time that telecommuting became possible and popular.

I think that walking around can be effectively applied in the arena of strategic management. Few executives that I’ve interviewed in the course of developing organizational strategy have disagreed with the prediction that I’d get many different answers if I were to separately ask managers and employees to describe their organization’s strategy. So walking around and asking the strategy question is a useful diagnostic; a way of creating a sense of urgency around formulating and communicating strategy across the enterprise.

Wise executives can take the walking around idea a step further. By asking managers, supervisors, and employees to describe the strategy as they see it, and the crucial follow-up question: “How has your understanding of the strategy changed the way you work?”, it seems that executives can gain valuable insight about the practicality of the strategic intent. If rank-and-file and middle managers in the organization are unable to articulate how to make strategy happen, it is pretty safe to conclude that any success in strategic change will happen by accident, or in spite of employee intent. If, on the other hand, folks are able to describe the strategy and their individual roles, executives will be better equipped to make the right decisions, allocate resources, and remove the roadblocks to strategy execution.

I’ve put a great deal of emphasis on the idea of formal communication of strategy, and my passion for this idea is undiminished. But I also believe that executives maintain too much distance between themselves and the day-to-day work of running and changing the organization. When was the last time you were part of a substantive two-way discussion between senior management and employees about the job of strategy? Maybe it’s time to start walking around.

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Saul Alinsky was born and raised in Chicago, where he became known for his organizing of meatpackers and later, civil rights groups. He is generally regarded as the originator of the term “community organizer” which was front and center in the rhetoric of last year’s U.S. presidential campaign – Alinsky’s teachings and writings influenced Barack Obama’s community organizing work in Chicago. Alinsky has always been a polarizing figure, even 37 years after his death in 1972. In the opening lines of Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote,

“What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

Alinsky wasn’t subtle, nor was he deferential. In plain language, he expressed his passion for change, and generations have learned from his wisdom.

No matter where you find yourself on the political spectrum today, the fact that you’re reading the Tenacious Blog means that you’re interested in effecting change in organizations, and much of Alinsky’s writing is as relevant today as it was during his lifetime. Organizational change doesn’t (usually) result from the kind of radical actions that Alinsky advocated, but change agents up against overwhelming resistance to change will benefit from his radical thinking.

In the course of my career, it has been my privilege to be a mentor to a number of younger management consultants. Most of them saw consulting as a simply a stepping stone to their next career opportunity, but a few of them were so engaged with the idea of management consulting as a profession that they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. It was to those few that I gave the gift of Rules for Radicals. My advice was to read the book with an open mind, and whenever appropriate, to substitute the word “consultant” for the word “organizer,” as well as some other substitutions. For example, in the chapter on Communication, Alinsky writes,

One can lack any of the qualities of an organizer (a consultant) – with one exception – and still be effective and successful. That exception is the art of communication. It does not matter what you know about anything if you cannot communicate to your people (your clients). In that event, you are not even a failure. You’re just not there.

Communication with others takes place when they understand what you’re trying to get across to them. If they don’t understand, then you are not communicating regardless of words, pictures, or anything else. People only understand things in terms of their experience, which means that you must get within their experience. Further, communication is a two-way processes. If you try to get your ideas across to others without paying attention to what they have to say to you, you can forget about the whole thing. (emphasis added)

Pretty radical stuff, right? If you’re serious about driving change in your organization, I guarantee that you’ll find wisdom, insight, and inspiration in this classic. I wish I could simply give (each of you) a copy of your own, but of course, I can’t. Eleven bucks at Amazon.com, or likely for even less (used) at your local college bookstore. Let me know what you think.

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Cronkite’s passing gives us pause for reflection; on his remarkable career, on the evolution of news and information sharing during our lifetimes, and the increasing irrelevance of network television news. Like many of my generation, I especially remember Cronkite for his role in two of the moments that defined 1960s America – his genuine emotion in November 1963 when he told us that President Kennedy was dead, and his boyish excitement at the triumph of the success of the Apollo moon landing, exactly 40 years ago this week.

As I reflect, I keep coming back to that phrase “the most trusted man in America,” and realize that I mourn not only Cronkite’s passing, but an erosion of trust in our society. When Cronkite delivered the news, its integrity was simply not an issue. But what person or institution today has earned anything close to the nearly universal trust that was felt for Cronkite?  I believe that it’s not just that there will never be another Cronkite, but that our world has shifted in a way that says we’ll never have that degree of trust in anyone or anything again in our lifetimes. Or maybe I am just older and more jaded now.

Observers far wiser than I may offer their explanations on how and why we’ve lost our trust, but I am more interested in finding and understanding the trust that does surround us. We trust our family members, our friends, our closest colleagues. Some trust the leaders of the organizations and societies of which they’re a part, but far more view those leaders with caution and suspicion. With our daily experience of economic crisis, job losses, Ponzi schemes, and the politics of polarization and demonization, the concept of trusted leadership seems increasingly remote. Whom among your leaders do you really trust?

Our institutions and organizations continue their poor record of success in changing themselves to survive and prosper in their changing environments. Successful change comes not only from a leader’s wisdom to present a compelling vision of a different and better future, but from the willingness of people in the organization to accept the risk of changing their own surroundings, of trying new things, of exploring the unknown. Successful change comes through leaders who are trusted by those led. But it is so rare to find leaders who inspire us to believe in ourselves the way Walter did. I’ll miss Walter Cronkite.

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Condition IV: Capability Building

The skills of the workforce and the capabilities of the organization must change to support the change agenda.

Lesson 8: Don’t overlook employees’ beliefs when driving behavior change

McKinsey idea: Requiring behavior changes without understanding what employees believe may not have the desired effect. Behavior stems from personal beliefs, and without understanding those beliefs, mandated behaviors may run counter to employees’ self-perception.

Tenacious Tortoise comment: McKinsey’s example of bankers becoming uncomfortable with becoming salespeople is not convincingly applied in the general case. But it is easy to see that simply telling employees to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do will have less effect than patiently creating an understanding of why the new behavior is desired and understanding and addressing any discomfort that the new behavior creates.

Lesson 9: Skill-building programs aren’t enough

McK: Enterprises engaging in formal training programs in skills required for the change agenda see little effect if the training is treated as a stand-alone event. It is important to provide the opportunity to practice new skills, receive feedback, and share experiences with colleagues reinforces the training and ensures that new skills do not stagnate. Interspersing training and field experience with new skills enables new skills to ripen and mature.

TT: Sounds right, but there needs to be a bit of a reality check here. With increased specialization of knowledge workers, broad-brush training programs for large groups of workers have become far more rare than in the past. Leaders who pay lip service to the idea of training employees in new skills under-invest in training programs and the integration of training with the work itself. Outsourcing of functions to firms with lower labor costs or concentrated skills has decimated enterprise training programs. A surplus in the skilled labor market resulting from higher unemployment raises the incentive for organizations to simply hire proven skills rather than take the risk of training existing workers for new tasks. It seems unlikely that organizations will invest in the carefully-designed training and field integration called for by McKinsey’s authors.

Been There, Done That

In their article, the McKinsey folks have captured and consolidated some important lessons for anyone driving change in organizations. But reading through the article, I was struck with the extent to which these ideas are well-understood in the community of strategy and change professionals that I’ve worked with over the years. When consulting, we’re often in situations where we have to guide the decisions of our clients; big decisions about the strategy itself, but countless smaller decisions about the design of a communication program, how a leader should act in a meeting, how to tell a story, or what to do with incentives. It is easy for me to imagine much agreement and little interest in the lessons here among experienced consultants, simply because they’re already part of the practice of driving change.

What was missing in Kotter’s and later McKinsey’s assessment of the low success rate of change in organizations (see part 1) was the degree of experience in change management in each organization. The common sense lessons offered by McKinsey aren’t common sense to those leaders and managers with little actual experience in driving change. That the majority of change programs are led by persons with little experience is perplexing, that the majority of these change programs fails is not at all surprising. To drive change in the enterprise without the guidance of an experienced facilitator, is simply, ahem, irrational.

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Condition II: Role Modeling

Conventional wisdom says that leaders must visibly behave in ways that reinforce the change agenda, and enlist others with influence to support the cause of change.

Lesson 4: Leaders are biased when seeing themselves

McKinsey idea: Most senior executives understand the concept of role modeling, in the abstract. But they mistakenly believe that they are already exhibiting the necessary behaviors. 360 degree feedback sessions and surveys help executives see beyond their own biased and generous view of themselves as ‘being the change.’

Tenacious Tortoise comment: Some executives view the strategic management process and change programs as a burden on their time – they say, “I need to get back to my real job.” These are the ones who are most likely to miss strategy review meetings, or arrive unprepared. The moment of truth comes when the senior executive either offers leeway and forgiveness, or holds team members fully accountable for their engagement with the process. I’ve seen months of good change program effort derailed when the leader him- or herself opts out of a critical meeting, or worse, is distracted by e-mail and phone calls during the meetings. Of course, these behaviors aren’t visible to rank and file, but the message sent in the leadership team has a profound effect on their subsequent behavior in the organization. This is why the quality of the coaching relationships I am able to build with leadership team members is a good predictor of the overall success of the change program.

Lesson 5: Don’t rely excessively on ‘influencers’

McK: The value of identifying and enlisting ‘influence leaders’ in the enterprise is unquestioned, but don’t view these influencers as the critical path to success. Unexpected members of the rank and file who ‘step-up’ to the change agenda may have more impact when driving change.

TT: In practice, far more energy is invested in developing the strategy than in broadly communicating strategy and performance across the organization. Identified influencers have often achieved that status because of their superior political skills. Enlisting influencers in the cause is no substitute for an effective communication program, and may require significant political concessions to those influencers to ‘buy’ their public support.

Condition III: Reinforcing Mechanisms

Policies, processes, procedures, systems, and incentives are all artifacts of the enterprise that must be modified to reflect the desired future state of the organization. But common sense changes don’t result in common sense behavior when people aren’t rational.

Lesson 6: Money is a costly way to motivate people

McK: Linking desired outcomes to staff compensation has limited impact on motivation. Meaningful links are difficult to establish, both because of low-credibility metrics, and because compensation incentives are usually too small to make a difference. But small, unexpected, often non-monetary rewards can have a disproportionately large effect on satisfaction and motivation.

TT: Compensation is simply not a motivator, it is hygienic, according to Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory. Incentive-based compensations are far more difficult to implement successfully than they are to imagine. Fortunately, the frenzy I saw for linking compensation to strategy over the past decade or so has subsided a bit, and given the anxiety of job losses, pay freezes, and forced furloughs, this seems like a good time to resist the urge to establish these connections. Non-monetary rewards and recognition can be a powerful motivator, but institutionalized programs of such recognition can quickly lose effect and credibility. Understanding individual employee motivations is a far better investment of management energy.

Lesson 7: Employees care about fairness

McK: Employees won’t pursue a change agenda they perceive is unfair to customers, suppliers, or other employees. Leaders should spend much more time understanding how employees understand and perceive the impact of the change program on stakeholders. Employees asked to behave in ways they see as unfair to others will ignore or thwart the change agenda.

TT: Wise advice. Extreme pressure resulting from the global economic slowdown is causing most organizations to look at costs, and the impact of cutbacks is being felt by employees and customers everywhere. These realities are inescapable, but asking employees to do things they believe are unjust in the name of company survival, even at the risk of personal job loss, will inflict damage to the organization / employee compact that may take years to repair.

Next: Two final lessons from McKinsey.

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The summary and my comments presented here (in three posts this week) are no substitute for reading the article itself, and it is likely that with some effort you can find a copy to view within your own organization or network of colleagues. My aim is to both entice you to read the article and to engender discussion here.

Despite the plethora of books and articles on the topic of Change Management since the 1996 publication of John Kotter’s Leading Change, McKinsey’s Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller contend that the field of change management hasn’t been very successful. Kotter’s earlier research revealed the only 30% of change programs succeed; McKinsey’s 2008 survey of over 3,000 executives worldwide found that only about one change program in three is successful.

McKinsey’s Emily Lawson and Colin Price offered a framework for influencing attitudes and behavior in their 2003 article The Psychology of Change Management. They said that four common sense conditions are necessary before employees will change their behavior: a compelling story about why the change is necessary, leaders and colleagues modeling the role of change, reinforcing mechanisms to align processes and incentives with the change, and capability building of the skills needed for the change. Common sense, indeed – but the problem is that people aren’t always rational. Aiken and Keller revisited these four conditions to organize their nine new lessons why common sense doesn’t always work.

Condition I: A Compelling Story

Established thinking in change management says that ongoing communication of a compelling reason is a necessary ingredient for change.

Lesson 1: What motivates leaders doesn’t motivate employees

McKinsey idea: Leaders tell stories about change that are company-centric: ‘We can regain our leadership through change, determination, and hard work’ or ‘We’re falling short of our competition, and our survival depends on change.’ But employees have been shown in research to be motivated roughly equally by five factors: social impact, customer impact, company impact, team impact, and self-impact. So the typical change story misses 80% of what workers care about.

Tenacious Tortoise comment: Absolutely! As leaders progress in their careers and rise in their organizations, their own motivations become much more aligned with the company than when they were younger. Leaders think they understand how their employees think, but the fact that they’ve become leaders makes them think differently than rank and file employees. Focus groups in which new strategy messages are tested with employees easily reveal this gap in thinking.

Lesson 2: Let employees write their own story

McK: In a behavioral study, participants given a lottery ticket with a randomly assigned number in willing to sell back those tickets for far less than those who were given the opportunity to select their own number. When people are able to make their own choices, they are far more committed to the outcome.

TT: The success of the balanced scorecard programs I’ve led had a lot to do with the extent to which the cascade process enabled mid-level managers and front-line managers to understand high-level strategy and then express the story (as captured in the cascaded strategy map) in their own words. Facilitators need to strike a careful balance between mandating every word of strategy in the cascade and allowing sub-units of the enterprise complete freedom to go their own way.  

Lesson 3: The story needs to be about both avoiding threat and seizing opportunity

McK: While the ‘deficit-based’ approach (identify and then fix a problem) is the predominant change model taught and used, a ‘constructionist’ approach (discovering, dreaming, and designing solutions around new ideas) has arisen as a reaction to the blame and resistance that results from a purely deficit-based model. Excess emphasis on either model in the change story is risky.

TT: Not a very compelling lesson from McKinsey. It is easy to say that emphasizing either extreme is a bad idea, but they offer no guidance on finding the optimal point between the two extremes. It’s a fine line between beating up people for poor past performance and losing credibility with unconvincing ‘blue sky’ aspirations for greatness.

Next: More lessons from McKinsey.

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